As a requirement for one of my current pieces of coursework I have to compare some different types of biometric devices. These sorts of devices include such things as iris scanning devices, palm scanners, hand geometry, fingerprinting scanning, voice recognition and retinal scanning. One of the issues that arose from my research was the problem of social acceptability of these technologies; with a large emphasis on trust.
When I thought about it, I realised I’m come into contact with this information a fair amount. For example, I used to go to a nightclub in Sydney, Australia where they took finger prints and matched them with your ID. That way you wouldn’t have to remember your card, you could just rock up and plant your finger on the device and they’d let you through, complete with the personalised greeting ‘Hi Bella’. Another example, was when some friends and I were visiting a couple of theme parks in Tenerife and had bought a double ticket in one, in order to go to both. By giving them our finger prints after visiting one, we didn’t have to bring the ticket a second time – they just took our finger prints instead. Pretty nifty.
After talking to a couple of people about the idea I realised my stance was fairly relaxed in comparison to others. Most of them had only ever seen this kind of thing at border control in their airport. Their main concerns were regarding how secure this kind of information was from being hacked if it was within a system, such as room access. It’s possible to create fake hands to bypass verification, or small stickers to put over the tips of your fingers with the fingerprint of someone else. There was also another concern… Do you trust the company you’re giving this data to? Do you trust them not to sell it to anyone else? Or use it to inform demographic studies on your behaviour…?
I remember one occasion a good number of years ago when a Russian family friend came to visit, driving over in his BMW. He wanted to show us some of the technology that the car had, automatic doors (similar to your fancy kitchen ones that close on their own) and its own GPS system (I had never seen one in a car before) and a phone attached near the handbrake. It also had fingerprinting technology in order to start the ignition. Which was pretty impressive, so I asked ‘Why don’t be have that technology here instead of keys?’. To which came the reply ‘Car theft is particularly common in Russia, so people often get their fingers chopped off in order for thieves to drive away with their vehicles. I think that’s why they don’t have it here.’ Never really forgotten that.
So is this collection of biometric data really a good idea? Particularly when hand data could be difficult to verify. In the cases of palm scanning or hand geometry, you could get blisters, cuts, scars, or wear a ring or simply change shape as you get a little older… Iris scanning is far more reliable – it never changes and is very quick to verify. But, that’s just it – it never changes. Meaning that if someone steals your data they’ve then stolen a part of you, and it’s not like a password which you can easily reset.
Sometimes when a new technology is developed and becomes more cheap to implement there’s a tendency to try and uptake some of it as much as possible with the preconception that it will make life easier and more convinient. But in reality, sometimes it’s important to look at the implications of a particular technology and the impact it can have on society as a whole.
All of us have within us the tools required to reach our potential.